Hymn to Old Age Read online

  I should not conceal the fact that I have received this letter with the same question many, many times, and have read it and answered it or not answered it. Only the power of the crisis is not always the same; it is not only strong, pure souls that ask such questions at some time or the other, but there are also rich young folk with their mixture of suffering and devotion. Some have written that I am the one in whose hands they place the decision; a yes from me and they’ll recover, a no from me and they’ll die—and for all the force of the ultimatum, I could sense that this was just an appeal to my vanity, to my own weakness, and I made my decision—this letter-writer will neither recover because of my yes, nor die because of my no, but will continue to cultivate his problems and maybe send his question to other so-called wise old men, comfort himself and even amuse himself a little with the answers, collect them and put them in a folder.

  If I don’t think that of today’s letter-writer, but take him seriously, respond to his trust and genuinely want to help him, it’s not happening through me but through him—it is his power that’s guiding my hand, his reality that’s breaking through my conventional old man’s wisdom, his purity that is compelling my integrity, not because of some virtue, some neighbourly love, some humanitarian feeling, but for the sake of life and reality, just as when we have breathed out, no matter what may be our purposes and our world views, after a short while we will of necessity have to breathe in again. We don’t do it—it just happens to us.

  And so now, seized by the need, irradiated by the lightning bolt of real life, I allow myself to be forced by the almost unbearable thinness of the air to act swiftly, and I no longer have doubts or scruples concerning this letter, I no longer subject it to analysis and diagnosis, but I must obey the call, and I do not have to offer my counsel or my knowledge, but must give the one thing that can help—namely, the answer the young man seeks and which he only needs to hear from the lips of another in order to feel that it is his own answer, his own necessity which he himself has conjured up.

  It requires a great deal for a letter, a stranger’s question, actually to reach the recipient, because the letter-writer—no matter how real and urgent may be his need—can only express himself through conventional signs. He asks: “Does life have a meaning?” and that sounds vague and silly, like a teenager’s world-weariness. But he doesn’t mean life in the sense of philosophies, dogmas or human rights—he means his own life and his alone, and from my supposed wisdom he does not want to hear some moral platitude or instructions in the art of giving life a meaning. No, he wants his real problem to be viewed by a real person who will share it with him for a moment and thus, for the time being, help him overcome it. And if I give him this help, it won’t be me that has helped him, but it will be the reality of his need, which for an hour strips this wise old man of his age and wisdom, and douses him with a glowing, ice-cold wave of reality.

  From Geheimnisse (Secrets) 1947

  Old age is not an enemy that one could fight or even shame—it is a mountain landslide that envelops us, a slowly creeping gas that stifles us.

  From a letter written on

  26th December 1939 to Rolf Schott

  END OF AUGUST

  In all its glory summer is returning

  Although we’d thought that we must say goodbye.

  Compressed into the shorter days, it’s burning.

  The sun is shining from a cloudless sky.

  So might a man, leaving all stress and strife

  And disillusioned, suddenly once more

  Finding himself upon a sandy shore

  Risk a dive into the waves of life.

  Whether this time on a love affair he’ll spend

  Or writing some late literary treasure

  As clear as autumn in his work or pleasure

  Will shine his deep awareness of the end.

  Being ill and dying should be the province only of old people, not of those who are still young, strong and happy. One bristles at it, one is shocked and one finds it brutal and unnatural, because humans know through their reason that nature does not by any means act in a friendly or considerate manner, but generally they still cling to the gentle, more pleasant sides of nature and try to envisage her as mother, guardian and friend of the living. When she then shatters the beautiful façade and strikes one of us with her paw, it is always like a terrible, violent awakening from cherished habits and illusions.

  From a letter written on

  23rd August 1947 to Otto Basler

  Being left behind, having fought one’s way through life, is also something, and it smacks of a crooked branch waving from an old tree.

  From a letter written on

  17th October 1928 to Manuel Gasser

  Brother Body is often a tiresome because all too close relative. And the ‘Conquest of the World’ is not a condition but an action, even a battle, in which one does not always come out on top.

  From a letter written in July/August

  1962 to Gertrud von le Fort

  I would like to wish you strength and patience in the struggle with old age, in which one can also gain victory in defeat.

  From a postcard written c1950 to

  Siegfried Seeger

  THE FLOWERING BRANCH

  To and fro, to and fro

  The flowering branch blows wild

  Up above and down below

  My heart swings like a child

  Between the darkness and the light

  Between dejection and delight.

  Until the blossoms blow away

  Until the branch with fruit is blessed

  Until the heart at last can rest

  Weary of its childish play

  Life’s hectic game, it will maintain

  Was full of joy and was not played in vain.

  AUTUMNAL EXPERIENCES

  THIS YEAR’S INCOMPARABLE SUMMER—a year which for me overflowed with gifts, celebrations, heart-warming experiences, but also with problems and with work—began to lose some of its friendly, congenial, cheerful ambiance towards the end; it descended into patches of melancholy, of irritation and listlessness, and of satiety and readiness to die. If one went to bed at night with the stars at their brightest in heaven, one sometimes awoke in the morning to a thin, grey, tired and sickly light, the terrace was wet and spread its cold dampness all around, the sky let its shapeless clouds hang loosely deep down into the vales, ready at any moment to discharge new showers of rain, and the world, which so recently had been breathing in the abundance and the certainty of summer, smelt harshly and bitterly of autumn, of decay and death, even though the forests and even the grassy slopes, which at this time of year are normally burnt brown and yellow, were still a solid green. It had fallen ill, our normally so robust and reliable late summer; it had grown tired and moody, and it was sinking. But it was still alive. Almost all these fits of indolence, self-neglect and moroseness were followed by a rally and a blossoming, an effort to return to the lovely day before yesterday, and these times of resurrection—they were often no more than hours—had a special, touching, almost timid beauty, a transfigured September smile which was a wonderful mixture of summer and autumn, strength and weariness, will to live and weakness. On some days, this aged summer beauty slowly, pausing for breath, pausing with exhaustion, fought its way through, and hesitantly the excessively clear, gentle light would conquer the horizon and the mountain tops, and in the evening the world and the sky lay in still and tranquil contentment, cool and limpid, promising yet more bright days to come. But overnight it all disappeared again, and in the morning the wind would sweep great gusts of rain over the dripping countryside; gone and forgotten were the cheerful, promising smiles of the evening, the scents and colours were washed away, the bright boldness and the all-conquering courage of yesterday’s battle were now submerged in waves of weariness.

  It was not only for my own sake that I regarded these strangely eccentric switches and swings with mistrust and a degree of unease. And it was not on
ly my own everyday existence that was threatened by these intrusions, which required that I should for a time remain shut up in my house and in my living room. There was also an important event coming up for which a friendly sky and a certain amount of warmth seemed more than desirable—the visit of a dear old friend from Swabia. This visit, already postponed several times, was due to take place in just a few days. Although my friend only intended to be my guest for one solitary evening, it would be a sad loss for me if his arrival, stay and departure had to take place in dark and miserable weather. And so I watched the sicknesses and recoveries, the restless ups and downs of the weather with great concern. My son, who was keeping me company during my wife’s long absence, helped me in the forest and vineyard, I performed my daily household duties, also chose a present for my eagerly awaited visitor, and in the evening I told my son a little bit about him—about our friendship, about his character and his work, for in the land of the knowledgeable my friend was the heir and the embodiment of all the best traditions, honoured and loved as one of the country’s great and good. How sad I would be if Otto, who to my knowledge had not been to the south for decades and who had never seen my house, my garden, or my view over the lake and valley, should observe all this while shivering in the damp dark light of a rainy autumn day. But secretly I was torn and tormented by a very different thought, a strangely inhibiting and embarrassing thought—my childhood friend, first a lawyer, then Lord Mayor of a city, then for a while a public servant, then in retirement loaded with all sorts of honorary positions—some important—had never lived in very comfortable let alone luxurious surroundings, and under Hitler’s regime as a civil servant who refused to toe the line, he and his large family had endured a period of hunger; then came the war, the bombings, the loss of his home and all his possessions, and yet with courage and cheerful acceptance he had coped with a Spartan life, having few personal needs; and so how would it seem to him, finding me, who had been spared the war, living in a spacious and prosperous house, with two studies, servants and many comforts that I could scarcely do without, but which would appear to him like the luxuries of a bygone age? Of course he already knew a certain amount about my life, and that all these nice, maybe luxurious things had been bought or given to me after long years of sacrifice and deprivation. But all the same, although my prosperity would not arouse any envy in him, perhaps the most honourable of all my friends, nevertheless he would eventually have to suppress a smile seeing all the superfluous and unnecessary things which he would find in my home and which I would regard as necessities. Life takes you along strange paths—once I had a lot of inhibitions and complexes because I was poor and my trousers were ragged, whereas now I was embarrassed by my possessions and comforts.

  I told my son when and where we two friends had first got to know each other. Sixty-one years ago—it was also in September—we had been taken as schoolchildren by our mothers to the monastery at Maulbronn; I have described it in detail in one of my books. There Otto and I were classmates, though he wasn’t yet my friend. That didn’t come about until we met again later on, but the friendship that grew from this became firm, unsentimental and warm. My friend had a direct and strong connection with literature, inherited from a learned and cultured father and fostered and nourished all through his life; this made him receptive to the work and character of a writer to whom he was already linked by shared memories. And as far as I was concerned, this friend was to be admired and sometimes even envied for his solid roots in a homeland with all its traditions, which endowed an already calm and stable being with a broad, secure base in which I myself was lacking. He was far removed from any form of nationalism, and perhaps even more sensitive in his opposition to patriotic fervour and hysteria than I was, but he was completely at home in his Swabia, its landscapes and history, its language and literature, its store of wise sayings and traditions, and what had begun as a natural heritage—his familiarity with the secrets, the laws of growth and life as well as the diseases and dangers of this native folklore—had developed over decades of study and experience into a wealth of knowledge that was the envy of many a patriotic orator. For me at any rate, as an outsider, he was the personification of all that was good about Swabia.

  And so, at last, he arrived, and the grand reunion got underway. He had grown a little older and his movements a little slower since our last meeting, but as on every previous occasion he seemed to me remarkably fit and strong for his age—which was the same as mine—and he stood firm on his well-practised hiker’s legs, so that as always I felt somewhat weak and shaky by comparison. And he did not come without a gift for his host. As an emissary from my Swabian relatives, he brought with him a heavy packet containing all the letters which had survived from my correspondence with my sister Adele between circa 1890 and 1948. Thus he brought me not only the chance to conjure up the past in our own conversation, but also a veritable treasure trove of the past condensed into all these documents. Although the little gift I had got for him now seemed thoroughly trivial, from the very moment of his arrival I no longer felt the slightest sense of embarrassment, and I happily and with a clear conscience showed him round my house. We took pleasure in each other’s company, he was in the best of moods after his trip, and from my point of view, my guest had brought back a part of my boyhood and of my childhood home. I also managed to dissuade him from his intention to leave the next morning—he agreed to postpone his departure for a day. He treated my son with the friendly courtesy of an old gentleman who, at the age of seventy-five, is not in the least put out but genuinely pleased to make a new acquaintance. Martin too could sense that he was privileged to be meeting someone of very special qualities, and several times when we were standing talking outside the house, he crept up on us with his camera and photographed us.

  Very few of those for whom I am writing this account are as old as I am. Most of them don’t know what it can mean to old people—especially when they have spent their lives far from the places and images of their youth—to see an object that bears witness to the reality of those earlier times: an old piece of furniture, a faded photograph, a letter the sight of whose handwriting and paper opens up and illuminates whole treasure chambers of past life, and in which we rediscover nicknames and colloquialisms that no one would understand today, and the sound and meaning of which we ourselves must make an enjoyable little effort to bring back into our memory. But it means much more, so much more than such documents from distant times to be reunited with a living person with whom you were once together as boy and youth, and who knew your long since dead and buried teachers, and has even preserved memories of them that you yourself have forgotten. We look at each other, my schoolmate and I, and what we see is not just the white hair and the tired eyes under the creased and somewhat stiffened eyelids; behind today, we see the yesteryear; we are not two old men talking to each other, but we are also seminarist Otto talking to seminarist Hermann, and beneath all the many layers of years, each of us can see the fourteen-year-old schoolboy, hear his boy’s voice of the time, see him sitting on his bench pulling faces, see him playing ball games or running, with hair flying and eyes flashing, see on the still childish face the first dawnings of enthusiasm, of emotion and of incipient awareness of intellect and beauty.

  Let me digress. Old people often develop a sense of history that they didn’t have in their youth, and this arises out of their knowledge of these many layers, which in the course of decades of experience and suffering merge into a human face and a human mind. Basically, even if not always consciously, all old people think historically. They are not content with the surface layer, which suits young people so well. They would not like to be without it, or to erase it, but beneath it they also like to perceive the consequences of their layers of experience, which only the present can endow with their full significance.

  To continue—our first evening was a veritable feast. We talked not only of our youthful memories, and about the lives, health or recent deaths of our schoolmates in
Maulbronn, but we also discussed and confessed all kinds of things—matters Swabian and German, the cultural life over there, the deeds and problems of important contemporaries. For the most part, our conversations were cheerful, and even very serious topics were broached with a kind of playful detachment, which is a natural and easily digestible way for us old folk to deal with current affairs. But for me, the recluse, it was all unusually exciting; we stayed at table far longer than usual, talked and listened for three hours on end, and my heart was warmed by all the news from my former home, and I had been enticed deep into the jungles of memory; I could sense in advance that all this would be followed by a bad night, and I was not wrong. But I was happy and willing to pay such a price for this wonderful experience. However, the next morning I was ill and exhausted, and glad that my helpful and affectionate son was there beside me. My friend was as relaxed and cheerful as ever; I had never seen him ill, nervous, moody or overtired. Throughout the morning I did absolutely nothing, took a powder, and from midday onwards was once more ready for action. The weather was bright, and I was able to invite my guest to make a tour of our hill. I felt neither ashamed nor envious to see that he was so fit, had slept well, and was responsive to everything I showed him; on the contrary, it did me good, because this dear man had an aura of calm and classical ataraxia which I was delighted and grateful to perceive, and to allow to take its effect on me as well. How good and fine and right it was that the two of us were so different in temperament, constitution and talents! Or rather, how fine it was that each of us had stayed true to his own person, and had become exactly what nature had made him—the serene but indefatigable civil servant with a deep love of literature and scholarship, and the nervous, all too easily wearied and yet secretly tough man of letters. All in all, each of us had more or less achieved and realised everything he could have asked of himself and everything he owed to the world. Perhaps Otto had had the happier life, but neither of us paid much attention to ‘happiness’, or at least it had not been the goal of our aspirations.